on this day in 1981. Prince Charles & Lady Diana Spencer announced their engagement.

[TheDuchessOfNorksBride]

So if you clearly remember this from an incredible 27 years ago, then you're no spring chicken!

i remember my neighbour
did not like HER cos she was posh,

fgs, what did she expect
a commoner?

WWW, I'm 26

I was 13 and I remember going to the hairdressers and asking for a Lady Di! We had bunting outside our house too!

She didn't fall in love with him, she set her cap at him. She thought it would all fall into place. He needed to marry a virgin, why only knows, when he was already servicing a married woman.

Like I said a travesty.

I loved it all!

I watched with my Nana and we had a great day.

pass me the sherry dear

Message withdrawn

I'm so old, I remember this very clearly .

We also set our alarms for 4AM to get up and start watching the wedding celebrations, complete with popcorn at dawn.

i suppose many of us were in love at 19, doesn't mean they were the right guys for us though.

i think she thought he'd fall in love with her. what 19-year-old girl with next to no experience of romance at all wouldn't?

it seems very obvious she loved him, or was at the least besotted.

from all the evidence, and there is much, she was a good-natured and not malicious young woman who was very naive and inexperienced, and her father and Phillip exploited this to their maximum benefits.

she was nineteen, fgs, hadn't even finished high school and was old enough to remember her parents' very nasty and bitter divorce and extremely public custody battle.

and what a sod he was, though, to go ahead with it all... should've been braver about camilla in the first place.

mind you... they are all terribly fucked in the head.

yes, aitch, i agree, he was old enough to have known better.

i doubt she could have come through that divorce and custody battle unaffected, unfortunately. it was very public and started when she was about 6. her older sisters had already been packed off to boarding school - there was a bigger gap between them and her and her younger brother because her mother had a stillbirth and several miscarriages in between.

in fact, Charles had briefly gone out with one of her older sisters.

her father was very receptive to Phillip's letters to him suggesting they hook up Diana and Charles.

well, he got what he wanted - Spencer blood will be on that throne till there isn't one.

maybe he felt like he'd already been sacrificed himself, though, and at least she was a willing sacrifice whereas he was unwilling.

and possibly some hewitt blood in the mix too...

Shit...I remember it.....but I aint no oldie....I still have sex ffs!

Much as I have no overriding respect for the Royal family. They are both his and hers children.

Unlike the rumours about Prince Andrew.

Yesss Bree, I've heard those too.

how on earth can you substantiate that, Bree? have you swabbed them all personally?

It is about as much a dead cert as the Hewitt comments.

Never heard rumours about Andrew. Have you seen Beatrice and Eugenie? They are the spit of their parents.

what?

I was 19 too! First year at University. I remember hearing about it in the dinner queue and thinking how frigging scary for someone the same age as me!
And then thinking what a shit awful outfit she wore for the engagement photo